inner pickle

garlicky

 

How much do you love garlic? I love it in so many ways. Roasted whole. Sizzling in olive oil alongside onion. Rubbed on toasted sourdough. As the background kick in a delicious pesto. Garlic is so great. 

I grew it for the first time last year and learnt a lot. I discovered, as I waited and waited for the garlic scapes to appear, that there is a difference between hardneck and other varieties like the organic Australian purple I planted. No scapes from the Australian purple.

It's pretty hardy, the old garlic. I worried it was too dry because I didn't mulch (I wanted to see the weeds and any resident bugs this first time around.) I worried it would rot in the ground when we had days and days of rain. I peered at it as it got a nodule in the stalk and wondered what the heck that meant. But it was all good. And I harvested a heap of garlic from one large raised bed. Enough to plant out in the market garden this year. 

We split it all apart this weekend and I kept some for eating until this next crop is ready. How much garlic do we need for six months or so? More than I've got left I bet! I'm planting in a raised bed in the kitchen garden as well, not that I don't have faith in Adam's vegie growing prowess, but the kitchen garden is mine, and I can peer at it and mulch or not mulch and harvest when I run out, even if they're just fledglings. 

Grow, garlic, grow!

xxx

Other bits:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the organic market garden

 

It was only three days ago that I suggested to Ad that we Roundup the organic market garden. (How's that for full disclosure? No one's perfect. Least of all round here.)

We'd started so well. The pigs went in last Autumn. They dug it up beautifully. Then there was a delay in the completion of their new digs up the hill and after the kikuyu grass was all gone, the weeds came back. Pigs don't eat weeds. The weeds grew tall and lush. We're rookies when it comes to clearing and cultivating and I kept looking at those weeds and wondered how we'd clear the paddock. Oh, we had lots of advice. Mostly chemical. Because of course if we just slash it and mulch it we'll just dig those weeds back in. So we need to clear it by hand. When I say 'we', I haven't done much clearing. When I suggested Roundup, Adam was the most shocked I've seen him in ages. He said something along the lines of, sure, why don't we just become Monsanto reps while we're at it?  then, are you kidding? then, you're not kidding. Then, please don't ever suggest spraying Roundup again. We're farming organically. There's your hoe, honey.

And then he went out and hired some expensive labour.

I go on record to declare Uncle Adam is fired from striking enterprise bargaining arrangements with nephews or children. Or maybe I should just go work for him. Conditions were conducive to chatting. Although I have to hand it to them, they worked pretty hard (at times.)

 

 Thanks, fellas. Weeds were chipped out. We're on our way. 

 

xxx

soiled

 

 

I'm ruined. I'll never be able to walk past a pile of dirt ever again and ignore it. I have developed a deep, deep feeling for dirt. Kind of like Adam's deep feeling for chickens. He's watching youtube videos right at this moment on how to sex chickens. He commented that 'sexing chickens' was perhaps not a youtube search to stumble on, and we're specifially trying to learn how to identify cornish cross hens from roosters for breeding purposes, but otherwise Ad seems to be enthralled. More on sexing chickens another day.

I digress from soil.

 

We're surrounded by it, as you always are when there's a building going up. We have new rules: gumboots ON when playing on the pile of dirt, girls, ok? We've only wrecked one pair of white sandals so far.

The digger guy loves our soil so much that he had a moment of dismay when he considered that this site will be covered with a (modest) slab of concrete at some stage soon. We'll be growing heirloom vegies in large quantites on another patch of equally lovely volcanic ex-dairy-farm soil soon! Please pour the damn concrete.

As an aside, I love the meter box on the site. It's the actual house power box which will be attached to the side of the house when it's no longer a drawing but a building. Cool, hey.

 

Dad has very kindly shifted a big pile of beautiful topsoil over next to my pumpkin patch so I can improve the patch once the pumpkins are finished. He's also shifted another big pile so I can top up my raised beds too. It's gorgeous soil. We're so incredibly lucky here, it's rich, gutsy, soft, full of worms and fertilised by 150 years of quality cow poo. I have an heirloom veg list for the market garden and I cannot wait to get planting. 

 

Meanwhile, in the house vegie garden, the beans are finished and in the freezer, the zucchini is out and the turnips are on the menu just about every night this week. Tonight we had a chicken pie made with turnip and spring onion. It was yummy. We're harvesting radish, rocket and rhubarb, the pumpkins are still maturing on the ground (very late for around here), the beetroots are up and the broad beans are solid and soldierly. The teepees are for the sugar snap peas. The garlic has to go in this week. My horticultural guru, Permaculture Vanessa (as distinguished from Pole Dancing Vanessa) told me this week that garlic needs to have a foot of green growth on it before the shortest day of the year in order to adequately photosynthesise the reduced sunlight from that point into fat bulbs. Makes sense. Must plant the garlic. And google when the shortest day of the year is. 

 

Also must find a home for the flats of seedlings I'm currently enthiastically spraying with water and peering at daily. I'm attempting onions, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. Probably doing it all wrong, but whatever, I'm excited about those sprouts. Might need another garden bed or two...

So here's to dirt. 

And correctly identifying chicken vents.

xxx

gardening leave

 

 

Hello! I haven't been around here much lately because I've been in the garden or thinking about the garden or cooking something from the garden or out somewhere with half the garden still under my fingernails. Classy. 

It's going NUTS! I can hardly remember a time without it, it seems so elemental to our dinner table. And this'll sound like an irritating cliche, but once you start eating homegrown produce, it's all over. You call that a radish? That is not a radish! Ah, the earnest zeal of a garden freak. Someone who you invite for coffee who just wants to poke around your pots and beds and see what you're growing and talk about how do you control cabbage moth organically? Yawn. I'm so sorry. It has taken me over. SO much so that I haven't even been photographing it!

So today I did.

Tilly is very keen on the garden, particularly the harvesting bit. She's very good actually, and excellent at washing picked vegies. And staging lets-eat-the-enormous-beetroot shots. 

 

 

I ripped into my zucchini bed last week when my elderly friend Lauris visited for an inspection and rolled her eyes at the enormous zucchini jungle. It hadn't occurred to me until that eyeroll that I might need to prune. And now there's light and air circulating we have even more zukes setting! Thanks Lauris! No one leaves this house without at least two zukes! You can use three? Excellent. 

 

I've planted broadbeans and climbing beans and I have to get some autumn type veg into seed trays soon. So exciting. All-out garden geekdom.

 

I've learnt that green capsicums and red capsicums are the very same plant, you just have to wait wait wait for them to turn red!! Waiting....

 

I foolishly planted watermelon in a bed. A wanton and reckless decision. It's (apparently) such a pain in the bum to mow around that hot damn those melons better be tasty. 

 

I was pretty stoked this lot of carrots grew straight. Look at that. They look like carrots! They taste super carroty! So FUN! 

Fresh picked strawberries! Cherry tomatoes baked with basil!

 

A few vitamins and minerals and I'm crack-a-lacking. 

I think I need more beds. Or, in fact, a paddock.

xxx

Thank you, Rooster.

 

Day 18 and if I ever pretend I got to Day 19 on my own ingenuity, feel free to snort. Our friends Mark and Amy are responsible for us not chucking it in today. Friends that grow stuff. Who sent us home with enormous, crisp, juicy watermelons and delicious pumpkins. A bag of fresh salad makings and tamarillos and strawberry guavas. 

And roosters! The deal was if we helped process four excess roosters, we could keep two. I've always wanted to learn - because our meat chickens are sold commercially, I have to take them up to a local abattoir. I'd never killed a chicken before, or even plucked one. 

It was a good day to learn! 

 

 

Mark has done this a few times before but still we referred to the master of chicken evisceration, Joel Salatin (specifically, Pastured Poultry Profits.) What we must have looked like, Mark at the killing cone, Adam on the knives, me calling out the step by steps according to Joel. It felt like the first one took an hour and then next three about five minutes each. 

I love learning new things. Even if it's how to detatch a bird's windpipe (my least favourite bit.) It was done respectfully and quickly and was mechanically pretty efficient, once we got going. 

We used a heated urn as a dunker, and the plucking was pretty quick. 

Thank you, rooster, for feeding us (tomorrow.)

Another reason to celebrate today was I made my first batch of sourdough with my new starter. 

If you've been around here for a while you'll know I got into sourdough last year. Except I killed my starter a couple of times, and then finally gave up and tossed it out. 

When I started this challenge without much yeast left in the jar, I immediately put together a new starter and got it going. Goes like this: 1 big tablespoon of flour and mix with filtered water to a sloppy paste. Next day, toss out half and "feed" again, flour + water. Keep paste consistency. Do this for about 5 or 6 days, tossing out and building up until it's actively bubbling and smells yeasty and frankly looks like a living thing. I'll photograph mine tomorrow to give you the idea. 

I then followed Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's sourdough recipe and kabam! What a loaf!

Chewy, crusty, flavoursome. 

And almost only flour and water. THAT is magic.

 

My next big question is: how do I make chicken soup without any onions or carrots?! Hmmm.

Ever killed your own food?

There is something weirdly deeply wholesome about it. (With apologies to vegetarian friends.)

xxx

 

sometimes poetry is a cucumber

The first vegetable I ever grew. Harvested today. Cool, hey!

Also, I have a sick and uncharacteristically miserable baby. Headcold, bit of fever, bit of throwing up, poor wee mite. Lots of cuddles and sips of water and 'osh, osh, osh'-ing (this family's version of hush.)

The cucumber can wait. Small person to attend to. 

xxx

we're in the garden

 

where are you today?!

xxx

rocket launch

Remember this little salad patch?

 

I can't believe I've actually managed to grow some food.

 

Friends for lunch last Saturday, rocket and feta salad for the table. 

 

 

And this is what happens when Adam (thanks for the photos babe) tells you he's taking a photo of the baby. Snot. Taking a photo of me with salad hanging out of mouth. Super attractive. 

 

In other news, we had a visitor this week!

 

Real life Australian fauna, in my front yard. So excited. 

 

The echidna and I, we hung out. I asked if she could stay till Henry and Tilly came home. She said 'no,' and 'lady those shoes are clapped out.' 

'Yeah but they're two of the same shoe Mrs Tiggywinkle,' I replied. 'We're on the way.'

She got bored with my chit chat and trundled off towards the dam where the big black snake lives. 

I tried to encourage her to go the other direction but the geese were bothering her and I said, 'Well Tiggy, you're on your own, but feel free to drop in anytime.' And she said, 'I'm an echidna, not a hedgehog you doofus, and who has time to iron and starch these days anyway?' 

(I didn't tell her my washing was all wet and stinkarooney in the machine. She's still a new friend.)

xxx

over here we are...

.. writing a business plan (or two)

.. doing a bit of bookkeeping

.. selling a house - our Brisbane place settled today!

.. baking choc chip cookies with many helping hands

.. warning visitors that Ivy has a new high pitched shriek that she tries out for fun at random times (cups have been dropped in alarm. Nothing wrong with her I assure you, just a new exciting noise.)

.. talking about chickens

.. learning to identify Huntsman spiders from Trapdoors and Black House spiders (NEVER thought I'd be googling that)

.. feeling like we're settled in. Making friends. Loving it.

.. all REALLY happy Adam's here.

.. wishing he'd carry me around in a backpack.  

 

Now we can really get started.

xxx

one potato, two potato...

Here I was thinking everyone grew sweet potatoes on their windowsills. 

But the surprise that my weedy greeneries evoked in all friends passing through our kitchen this weekend made me realise that it's not, perhaps, a worldwide fad.

Shame. They're super cool! (And gosh that windowsill needs painting...)

I first grew sweet potato plants when I was sixteen and my music teacher at highschool lent me Laurel's Kitchen, as I had just pronounced myself vegetarian, and it was a marvellous book full of vegetarian recipes (and philosophies.) Gosh I loved that book. I thought about it recently as I was thinking about our meat-free month (still under consideration throughout the household) and it's sitting on my Amazon wishlist, waiting for a good excuse!

Anyway, they talked a bit about growing sweet potato on windowsills in Laurel's Kitchen. And so I often have, since. When a potato, or kumera, shoots because it's been sitting in my spud basket a bit long, it goes into a glass and onto the windowsill.

They start about this big:

And after they've sat on the kitchen windowsill for a bit and gotten in Adam's way while he washes up and he's cursed them (he calls them triffids) a minimum of eighty times, they go into the compost or the garden.

Like this:

Actually, this triffid was so close to being thrown to the worms after tickling Adam's nose one too many times, that I did a bit of a rush job and only half buried it! It's still growing strong, as you can see:

xxx